I received the following statement from HRIFO on Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad’s latest assault on internet freedoms in Egypt…

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) announced today that it will not be terrorised into giving up its right to sue Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad for violating HRinfo’s copyrights.
Judge Mourad raised many cases including one accusing HRinfo Executive Director Gamal Eid and bloggers Manal Hassan and Alaa Seif, administrators of http://manalaa.net, of insult and defamation.
Eid was surprised to find that he was accused along with Alaa Seif and Manal Hassan in an insult and defamation case that was raised by Judge Mourad against them. After the prosecutor finished interrogation and ordered the release of the three on their own cognisance, the police continued to detain them for more than 10 hours giving the excuse of finishing procedures, which started at 1:00 pm and ended at midnight!
In addition to the false accusations that the judge is putting forward, the three were surprised to find that the same lawyer who raised a hisba (A sort of a civil case in an Islamic form) against the currently imprisoned blogger Kareem Amer is one of the witnesses brought in by the judge. It is worth noting that the lawyer had previously accused Amer’s lawyers, including Eid, of infidelity for defending Amer.
“The judge violated our copyrights and when we exposed this he filed a lawsuit to block HRinfo’s website and 20 others,” Gamal Eid, HRinfo Executive Director, said.
“Today he is raising a criminal case against Alaa, Manal, and me and we have known of another criminal case against Ahmed Seif Al-Islam, Director of the Hesham Mubarak Center for Law, and others.

Click on Latuff’s cartoon below to read the full statement…

The statement could be found in Arabic here…